2007 IT White Paper
The Japanese Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (MIC) published a 2007 IT White Paper, Information and Communications in Japan on July 3, 2007. Some of the key findings in its "IT and Society" section include the following (the statistics are as of the end of 2006).
87 million Internet users
87 million out of 127 million total population are Internet users in Japan. Among the Internet users, 73% use both personal computers and mobile terminals (cell-phones and PHSs) to connect to the Internet. 19% use personal computers only while 8% use mobile terminals only.
More people use both personal computers and mobile terminals
The number of those who use both personal computers and mobile terminals to connect to the Internet increased rapidly from 48.6 million to 60.99 million in one year, reducing the number of mobile-terminals-only users by 64.2% to only 6.9 million.
More Internet users among older generations
When compared to 3 years ago (end of 2003 vs. end of 2006), an increase in the Internet users is most prominent among the older generations as shown in the chart below ("the Internet usage by generation" copied from 2007 IT White Paper published by the Japanese Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications). In this chart, the yellow bars are for 2006 and the purple bars are for 2003, both showing user percentages in various age groups.
